A province-wide initiative has police officers keeping an extra eye out for distracted drivers -- specifically truck drivers.
OPP kicked off "Operation Safe Trucking" Tuesday morning. The safety blitz targets commercial motor vehicles (CMV) throughout the week to make sure drivers are being cautious on the roads.
In order to catch distracted truck drivers, provincial police will be out in "unconventional enforcement vehicles" that will give officers a better vantage point.
"When we go by in our normal patrol cars we're a lot lower and you can't really see what the drivers are doing," says Constable Jay Denorer with the Chatham-Kent detachment. "We want to see if the drivers are actually focusing on the roads or if their attention is drawn somewhere else. "I know one time I had a driver actually watching television inside his transport truck as he was rolling down the highway."
Denorer says although "Operation Safe Trucking" only officially runs for a week, it's something they enforce throughout the year.
"Our members are always out on the highway looking for different safety violations," he says.
The push to spot distracted or even dangerous truck drivers comes after a number of reported crashes this year.
"From January 1 to December 8, 2017, the OPP responded to 6,252 transport truck related collisions. A total of 84 lives were lost," he says. "As a result, we just want to be out on the highways, making sure that not only the transport trucks but that general motorists are safe."
Operation safe trucking - Riding shot gun in a transport truck https://t.co/VkIRdSk4M3
— Sgt Kerry Schmidt (@OPP_HSD) December 11, 2017